DISQUS

Technology Liberation Front: Digg, Network Neutrality, and the Long Tail

  • Don Marti · 2 years ago
    Or the telco could just put "no disguising your conference calls as an online game" in the ToS as a "security" measure, and throw off a couple users a month for violating it -- just enough to make the home office customers who can't afford to lose their net connections pay for the more expensive telco or partner service.
  • Tim Lee · 2 years ago
    Don,

    A couple of customers a month? At that rate, it would take millennia to kick all the TOS-breakers. And they're not likely to actually kick them off the network, they'd probably just require them to upgrade to the commercial offering as a condition of getting their service re-activated. Not only that, but most users will have at least one other option, so even if they really were banned from one network they'd be able to sign up with the other. I just don't see it as a credible threat. Certainly *some* companies that absolutely can't afford even a few hours of downtime would sign up for the higher-priced service, but most of those aren't going to be relying on VoIP for their connectivity any time soon anyway.